How to Speak Nebula
by jazzforthecaptain
Summary: On an off-Earth road trip, Castiel and Captain Jack Harkness pay a visit to a nebula photographed in 2009 by the Hubble telescope. With Castiel's help, Jack has an unexpected revelation about the universe, and even finds himself swallowing a little of his own arrogance. Just a little.


The truth of Space - like family, Marilyn Monroe, and the Jazz Age - doesn't really come through in the photographs.

In the Twenty-First Century, any Internet search engine could produce upwards of five million images for 'cosmos,' or 'galaxy,' (not counting the inevitable cocktails, autos, and photos of Neil deGrasse Tyson) that look more a fairytale of space than the reality. Gorgeous raspberry plumes swirl around bright webs of stars in vivid aquamarine, hot white, and deep deep blue.

Jack understood the point of it for explanation and definition, and there were nice secondary results that rippled through the human cultures of Earth. Fascination, for one thing. To them, space was a black, eye-smooth pool, where filmy tropical fish stars sailed the void. Children raised their eyes to the night sky and dreamed of piloting a ship among them.

Castiel looked disappointed.

Jack straightened his arms, pushed back a little from the rail at the rim of the viewing dome, and smiled where the angel couldn't see. Jack still found the dualities of Castiel funny, all these centuries later. Castiel's 'Father,' - God, creative sentience, intelligent design, what have you - was responsible for all of existence. For the stars and the planets and anything that wasn't dark emptiness. And yet Castiel's realm of experience was, compared to the universe, tiny. He hadn't been outside his own little solar system. All of his information about space came from Captain Jack Harkness... and... Google?

Their ship rolled a slow arc near Nnenani's Mouth (as it's typically translated, 'Planetary Nebula NGC 2818' to NASA, who seems to abhor whimsy ninety-seven percent of the time). The Twenty-First Century Earth technology known as The Hubble Telescope captured images of the nebula's light in 2009. The final composite images had been processed - as all space photography at the time - and released to the public with much fanfare. Its blue and amber gem tones weren't real - much of the light emitted by Nnenani's Mouth isn't visible to the human eye.

"Is it what you expected?" Jack murmured, leaning close to Castiel's ear. The tips of his fingers brushed the nape of his neck. Jack was gratified to feel a subtle shiver vibrate through Castiel's body. Drawing response from Castiel aroused him as much as anticipating his own pleasure. He could make a creature composed of lightwaves _shiver_ with a touch; Jack's ego wriggled in that revelation like a cat in a pool of sunlight.

Castiel still didn't get touched enough. Not nearly enough, not for Jack's liking.

Castiel tilted his head and looked up at Jack, one-eyed. "I'm not sure what you mean."

Jack kissed his temple, helpless to resist the opportunity. "The nebula. You mentioned this one specifically when we made our itinerary last week."

"I... try not to have expectations," Castiel answered after a pause, "my personal experience is so limited, comparatively."

"So what do you think?" Jack's lips curved against Castiel's hairline, and his hand drifted into more dangerous territory. Castiel shuddered again, his shoulder pushed into Jack's chest.

"It's... very well mannered," Castiel said.

"Well mannered?"

"It's a nebula. My opinion - and yours - doesn't matter to it at all."

Jack blinked and backed up a half step, his easy arrogance sliding backward as he failed to parse Castiel's careful tone. Castiel looked up at him, the light of the nebula caught in his gaze.

"I'm not sure what you expect me to say, Jack," Castiel said, expression creasing with confusion, "Any compliment I could pay regarding its physical appearance is meaningless. It's as silly as if you looked at my true form and told me I was a pretty color." His eyes drifted back to the glass.

Surprised into silence, Jack watched his features soften.

Castiel raised his left hand and offered it up to Jack, palm up, two fingertips extended. "Perceive it as I do, Jack," he said quietly.

Jack wasn't about to resist _that_ invitation. Not even if it promised to fry his brain, and it frequently did. He took Castiel's hand and pressed it to his cheek.

Everything around him exploded. The shrapnel of it blew into and through him as frizzing moments of sensation, while his woefully slow human brain struggled to keep up. 'Sensation' was the best word he could form, as each bit of information assaulted his whole being from every avenue; all of his senses suddenly tied together in one great, bright, pulsing cable. And there was a sixth sense, and a seventh, and possibly even an eighth or a ninth, and those were just the bits that his poor brain _could_ decipher. He felt the world in the vibrations of his bones; in the tiny zoetrope flickers of input from bacteria in his gut. In the way energy scattered across the soft flesh of his mind.

Jack forgot himself. Forgot that he was anything _but_ mind. Perception. Comprehension.

Nnenani's Mouth rang the continuous note of a prayer bowl, tasted of warm raspberries and stringent green tea, flashed pulses of nameless colors behind his eyes, purred at the lowest ranges of his hearing like a whale.

And beneath all that, or perhaps all of that combined, he felt... _welcome_.

 _ **HELLO,**_ the nebula said, to the very center of his being. He felt its attention turn to him, slowly, a fraction at a time the way the earth rolls on its belly into the sun. Of course. Of course it did.

The soft, mortal human scraps of Jack's consciousness squeaked in fear and tried to scurry away. The rest of him - the aeronaut, the adventurer - hauled them back. He wondered if Castiel could see how happy he was, if his glee was as incandescent as it felt.

Talking to a nebula wasn't as hard as Jack thought it might be. He was trained to speak with creatures who talked in mental pictures, in concepts, and that turned out to be in his favor. Nnenani's Mouth was old, and absorbed soundwaves from all parts of the universe. They spoke in fragments of English, in Welsh, in Old Arcturan and New New New New French, and mostly in thoughts. He'd never talked to space before. Not and expected it to _answer_.

In a few minutes, he was laughing. Crying. He felt too full of this, brittle as glass with the wonder of it. The nebula felt his joy, and gave him pulses of welcome and love in return. It was not lonely, but it was glad they came. Over it all, the nebula's attention grew brighter, stronger, until Jack thought that somehow, his brain might go blind.

Castiel pulled him away before he was ready to leave. In a blink, he was fastened back in his own body, tucked away from the screaming glory of Nnenani's Mouth. Jack's ears rang and felt thick. His head hurt until even the low light in the viewing dome pained him.

He covered his eyes. "You call _that_ well-mannered," Jack said, sniffing a little, voice wet and threaded through with a laugh.

"Superlatives aren't big enough," Castiel said, his own voice thicker than usual. He took Jack by the arm and gently led him away from the light. "I'm sorry," he added, "I know you wanted to stay. If it looked at you any harder, I'm... not sure what would have happened."

"It didn't mean to," Jack said. They moved into Castiel's dark quarters, and Jack could take his hand from his eyes. A latticework of afterimages colored his vision in the dark, as his brain struggled.

Castiel kissed his temple, and pulled Jack's coat from his shoulders. "I don't think it talks to flesh-based organisms much." He pushed Jack down onto the wide, soft bed that commanded most of the room, crawled in after him, and stripped them both to the skin. Jack let him, relaxed into his hands. The pain in his head receded, as his body reset.

He started to cry again. His hands shook. All of him shook. Castiel lay beside Jack in the little dark universe of the room, waiting patiently for his mind to finish its orbit.

"Do you do this a lot?" Jack asked, finally, a little more plaintive and exasperated than he intended.

"It reminds me of my elder siblings," Castiel replied, as if it were no big deal. And Jack wanted to roll Castiel under him on the spot, make him shiver and writhe and moan pretty needy things for payback. These ridiculous celestial beings and their excessive sensory perceptions. It wasn't fair. He didn't quite get to the 'rolling under' bit, as right then Castiel straddled him.

Later, then.

"It looks nothing like its photographs," Castiel added. He boxed Jack's head in his arms and breathed into him, spread over him like warm, quiet water.

Jack kissed him once, soft, then again with lazy heat. He chuckled, the burned patterns on his vision only a whisper now. "Hardly anyone does."


End file.
